Our Story

My name is Ted Turnbull, and I’m proud to introduce you to Prairie Sun Beeswax, a family-owned honey and beeswax business nestled in the heart of the Canadian prairies. Our story began in the 1960s when my father discovered his passion for beekeeping and started a small bee farm, hauling equipment in the back of his car. As a boy, I fell in love with beekeeping myself. And as a teenager, my girlfriend Joanna (and now wife of 30 years), started helping my father and I with the honey harvest. Together, Joanna and I have owned the farm since 1993.

Now, ownership has entered its third generation as my son recently assumed partial ownership.  When I took over the farm from my father 3 decades ago, we had 300 hives. That number has grown to around 1500. Our beeswax business started from scratch in 2014, and it has grown every year since, as we have perfected our filtering process and continue to build a customer base that recognizes the unparalleled quality that we deliver.

Our four children grew up helping with all aspects of running the farm; feeding the bees, wrapping and moving the hives indoors for the cold Manitoba winter, and of course, spending their summer vacations extracting honey. Beekeeping, in this way, bound my family together. Each of my kids knew and valued hard work. Each of them learned self-confidence and resiliency. What makes me happiest now that my kids have children of their own is that my kids do not remember the work during those summers – they remember and cherish how much time we spent together enjoying each others company.

For generations, our homestead has been the centre of our family’s prosperity, and today, we are resolutely committed to protecting that landscape for many generations to come. Our mission is to produce the highest quality, purest beeswaxwith minimal environmental impact. In 2017 we installed a 78-kW solar panel array to provide electricity for our growing wax rendering demands. In addition, we have since installed an ultra-efficient stove in our 1600 square-meter shop/warehouse that reuses all the leftover byproducts of wax rendering to heat our tanks in the wax rendering process.

I offer the warmest regards to anyone who cared to read our story; I hope that the fruits of my family can warm yours.

Ted Turnbull

 

(My father, Howard Turnbull, hauling hives in the trunk of his car, 1965.)

 

 

 

(My wife Joanna and our 4 kids dressed up on a parade float.)

 

 

 

(My eldest son Jordan, who now owns part of Prairie Sun Beeswax.)

 

 

 

(Two of my kids helping uncap a frame of honey pulled fresh from the hive.)

 

 

 

(One of the tallest hives that we ever had on our farm. The brown mass up the hive and on the ground around it is all bees, ~2016). 

 

 

 

(My wife and I with our new solar panels.)

 

 

 

 

(A picture of our farm yard from the field behind the shop.)